Molière 2007

The film opens in 1658 with Molière, Romain Duris, returning to Paris with his theatrical troupe to perform in a theatre the king’s brother has granted him, signaling a triumphant return to the stage.

Most of the narrative unfolds as a flashback to 1645, tracing the precarious path that leads the young actor from debt to opportunity.

Molière is freed from debtor’s prison by Monsieur Jourdain, a wealthy but socially ambitious commoner who agrees to cover the actor’s debts if Molière agrees to teach him how to act. The arrangement pits a man eager to elevate himself against a man who wields performance as both craft and weapon.

Jourdain, a married man with two daughters, hopes to use this new talent to win the affection of Célimène, a recently widowed aristocrat with whom he has become obsessed, and he imagines presenting a short play he has written for the occasion. The irony thickens as Molière, instead, is introduced to the Jourdains as Tartuffe, a fictional priest who is to tutor the younger daughter, a deception that foreshadows the troupe’s later explorations of truth, power, and theater.

As the story advances, Molière finds himself drawn to Jourdain’s neglected wife Elmire, unlocking a dangerous attraction that complicates loyalty, art, and ambition. Subplots sharpen the tension: the elder daughter’s budding romance, and the sharp, cynical Dorante’s schemes against the gullible Jourdain, a web of desire and deception that tests everyone involved.

The tale remains largely fictional, yet it mirrors and echoes actual scenes and lines from Molière’s own plays, including Tartuffe, Le Misanthrope, Le Malade imaginaire and Le Bourgeois gentilhomme, whose principal character shares the name Jourdain. It is implied that these “real-life” threads fed profoundly into the playwright’s mature works, blending a biographical glimmer with the timeless theater he would come to define.

The film features a notable ensemble, with Duris in the title role alongside Laura Morante and Fabrice Luchini, whose performances anchor the saga’s humor, tension, and introspective spark.